Radhika Choudary is associated with Biotechnology as the
executive director of the Association for Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE).
A lawyer by qualification, she practiced in Shimla for a while before relocating
to Bangalore. After a brief stint at Infosys as a technical writer, she joined
ZeeNext.com where she took care of its legal portal. She has also been
associated with the Karnataka State IT Department.

Speaking about her work, she says "ABLE has been pretty
challenging. The industry is still at a nascent stage and now the latest
challenge is get ABLE out of this Bangalore-centric mode and open offices in
main metros of the country. We successfully launched our US chapter at BIO 2005
in Philadelphia recently and we also plan to make our presence in Europe too and
other parts of the world at a later stage."

ABLE is working on putting together a national conference to
bring together people from different sectors of biotechnology on a single
platform and is in talks with the government in this regard. It also intends to
float very focused seminars and workshops and initiated this effort with
BioInvest seminar in Mumbai which saw the participation of a large number of
venture capitalists and others associated with the industry. With an increasing
number of global companies wanting to tie up with Indian biotech companies, ABLE
plans to conduct a biopartnering conference in the country in 2006.

Talking about an interactive session she had organized last
year for minister of science and technology and ocean development, Kapil Sibal,
with the heads of various segments of biotechnology and life sciences, she said
it turned out be a great success and gave her immense satisfaction. This helped
in bridging the gap between the government and industry paving the way for
further development and progress.

With so much happening in the Association, Radhika sees a
very bright future for ABLE and is happy to be part of the industry during its
growth. As a life member of ISCKON, she has been involved in the activities of
the Akshaya Patra Foundation which she finds very gratifying and her ultimate
aim in life is to start a home for the aged as she feels there is a lack of good
old age homes in the country. "I just like this whole idea of giving back
to the society and I see that happening a lot in Bangalore," she says.

"We take so much from the society and so little we give
back I feel people should make a difference to the society even if it in a small
way." she adds. Very passionate about environmental issues, Radhika
encourages one and all to plant saplings anywhere anytime and believes that we
all need to contribute to make the society a better place to live.

"Enjoy your studies"

Bipin Deshmane, general manager, Shreya Biotech Pvt Ltd, Pune.

Bipin Deshmane, working as general manager at Pune-based
Shreya Biotech, is involved in technology transfer, scale-up and production of
recombinant biotherapeutic proteins such as human insulin.

Speaking about his role models who influenced him the most,
Deshmane says, "At the international level, Dr Francis Crick, who
discovered the structure of DNA along with Dr James Watson in 1953 is my role
model. I feel this discovery is the biggest discovery in molecular biology in
the last century. Dr Crick can be rightly described as the greatest molecular
biologist of the 20th century." At the national level I consider Dr Obaid
Siddiqui, another great molecular biologist, who established molecular biology
department at TIFR, as my role model. His work on molecular biology of bacterium
–E. coli fungus –Asperigillus and a fruit fly - Drosophila melanogaster is
exemplary and outstanding."

Deshmane has a few suggestions for the student community to
step up the ladder of success in biotechnology. He says, "Students should
study biotech for pleasure and not for the purpose of taking up exams. The
latter approach may help them in short term but will certainly be not useful in
the long run. Try to enjoy the study. If you enjoy any work, you don't have to
work. Your fundamentals have to be crystal clear. When I interview candidates, I
find that their fundamentals are miserably poor."

"The whole world is now a global village. Indian
students have to compete with international students along with the locals.
Hence they have to update their knowledge not on yearly basis but on a
day-to-day basis."

"If biotech students want to enter into the industry,
then knowledge of quality assurance, regulatory affairs, cGMP, equipment
validation, process validation, analytical method validation, FDA, pollution
control etc are very much required. Whether these topics are present in the
syllabus or not, whether these topics are taught or not, the students have to
acquire this knowledge if they are interested in joining the industry."

"The next big wave after IT is certainly
BT"

Lila Poonawalla, member, Maharashtra Biotechnology Task Force

Lila Poonawalla has been associated with biotechnology as a
member of the Maharashtra Biotechnology Task Force, which is chaired by Dr RA
Mashelkar, director general, CSIR, and as former managing director of Alfa
Laval, one of the leading suppliers of equipments to biotechnology companies and
as advisor to BioImagene, a Pune-based company.

Lila Poonawalla has a long and active association with
companies related to life sciences. She says, "There are great
opportunities in this field and in the future these opportunities are only going
to grow. Indian core strength areas are new drug discovery, pre clinical and
post clinical trials, pharma development, IT applications, early clinical
development, drug delivery assessment and many more areas where experts in
biotechnology are required. Big pharma companies across the world are looking at
India as an attractive destination for co-development of pharma/biotech products
and this type of work requires scientists specializing in biotechnology."

Lila Poonawalla, who began her career by overcoming the first
major obstacle of being a woman in the corporate world and rising to the top
management level, started the Lila Poonawalla Foundation to help and promote
education among women, has some advice for students. She says, "Do not miss
the next big wave after IT. It is certainly BT. Not only BT but also
nanobiotechnology, the most advanced technology which is poised to meet the
medical needs. In healthcare the possibilities of nano technologies are plenty.
In pharma companies nano technology promises to be the least expensive way for
drug discovery. Investment in the Indian biotech industry is estimated to reach
about $10 billion by the end of the current decade from $2 billion now, owing to
multinational collaborations and indigenous R&D efforts."

Quality is the keyword

Radha Shekar and Dr Saral Thangam are among the prominent
women personnel working at Lotus Labs, Bangalore.

Radha Shekar who is the chief technical officer, is a
graduate in pharmacy and has been working in the pharma industry for the last 22
years in areas of product development, contract research activities, quality
assurance and regulatory affairs. She has been working with Lotus Labs for the
last two years, heading the bioanalytical department where her team estimates
drugs in biological matrices like blood, urine, plasma and serum. Radha started
her career with Rallis India at their analytical development department in 1983.

She moved over to Burroughs Welcome India Limited in 1987 at
their Mumbai plant, subsequently shifted to Bangalore and joined a company
called Eros Pharma where she served as the head of the product development
department and subsequently took over quality assurance and regulatory affairs.

Says Radha, "On the job front, we plan to grow at the
rate of 100 percent every year for the next few years and the lab is constantly
expanding. We have very high technology based equipment and the people we look
for are very quality high pharmacists or analytical chemists. In short we employ
scientists of very high caliber."

"If you look at future for high technology based core
competencies in India, I think India has a very good potential. A lot of
multinationals are looking at outsourcing not just IT but a lot of clinical
research activities from India. So there is a very high scope for India to
become a world leader in this area also," she feels. "We are trying to
make Lotus a world class CRO," she adds.

Dr Saral Thangam is medical advisor and head–quality
affairs, Lotus Labs. Her work experience spans 10 years in a number of
hospitals, which includes performing Phase III clinical trials at St John's
Hospital. She also holds a PhD in an area closely related to clinical research.
Basically a physician, Dr Saral who was looking for a career which would help
her combine physiology and general medicine and which would be patient-oriented
as well as research-oriented, joined Lotus Labs in May 2001. She is also
involved in preparing training modules for employees, conducting seminars and
conferences and is also associated with the ethics committee of the
organization.

"Grants for young scientists will drive
innovation and creativity"

Anuradha Acharya, CEO, Ocimum Biosolutions

Anuradha Acharya, CEO and CSA, Ocimum Biosolutions, has
worked in several roles from an IT professional to a technical leader with over
eight years of experience in full development lifecycle projects. She has worked
for Mantiss Information, Chicago, which is now part of Dynegy and SEI
Information Systems before establishing Ocimum Biosolutions with Subash
Lingareddy in 2000 in Indianapolis.

Says Anuradha, "Our technical interests lie in
bioinformatics algorithms and lab automation. The primary focus is to be
one-stop destination for bioinformatics consulting need and also on development
of key ready-to-use bioinformatics software modules and contract research."

Anuradha feels that our country badly needs grants "for
the young, energetic, creative but not-so wealthy scientists and entrepreneurs
as this is what drives innovation and creativity."

"Human resource development has to be taken really
seriously as the foundation of the industry depends on how good our scientists
are." Speaking about bioinformatics, she says "The quantity has
increased tremendously but the quality still has not which is sad. Unless we can
introduce newer technology areas in universities, the new crop of scientists
will always be behind their peers. That needs to change."

"We really need to increase the scope of our industry
and the type of work we do", she adds. Her take on clinical diagnostics:
"We have to realize that while India may not have been at the forefront in
this area, the government needs to gather information on all companies and
create a solid execution plan for the coming years." Pharmacogenomics is a
great initiative, Anuradha feels and hopes her company will be able to play an
important role in such advanced initiatives by the government.

Dr Villoo Morawala-Patell sees her company Avestha Gengraine
Technologies evolving into a biotechnology conglomerate where it is working to
provide innovative solutions for global challenges in agriculture and health
problems- degenerative conditions, metabolic disorders and infectious diseases.

With a mission "to improve productivity in agriculture
and develop agro-technologies that would lead to value addition in food and
pharma products", it was at the age of 45 that Dr Villoo founded Avestha
Gengraine, the name of which is derived from Zenda Avestha, or book of
knowledge, and the latter part from a combination of the words gene and grain.
Says Dr Villoo, "I grew up in a well-to-do family but I used to see farmers
starving due to drought and I wanted to help them and Avesthagen is the result
of this."

Dr Villoo feels human resource is the biggest strength of the
biotech industry but "we need to improve on quality to achieve the right
kind of growth." "The biotech sector should provide incentives in
order to avoid attrition and there is also a need to support young players
entering the field," she says. Support should come from the government, the
industry and venture capitalists, she adds.

With a doctorate in Plant molecular biology from University
of Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg in France with a post-doctoral tenure from
University of Ghent, Belgium, Dr Villoo has received several prestigious grants
from Institutions including The Rockefeller Foundation, Indo-French Centre for
the Promotion of Advanced Research
(IFCPAR) and DFID.